Are you serious about being successful in credit? How badly do you want the rewards of collections success? Badly enough to cosy up to someone you would normally avoid like the plague?

Strongly enough that you’d risk contamination from someone you’d prefer to run away from or duck behind a bush or hide under a parked car or cross the road to avoid? Oh, how dreadful and nasty of you.

You should be so ashamed of yourself! But take heart – it is very possible that the other person does not wish to bump into you at the office let alone meet you downtown on a Saturday morning. And she’d most probably be wishing you’d leave the country for good. All is fair in love and war but it’s game on at the office!

You need to put aside your personal ambivalence toward colleagues at the office if you want to shine in the spotlight of success.

SKILLS ONLY: company bosses do not really expect any of their employees to become your best friend. If it happens it happens. But you were not hired for your buddy-making skills. You and the rest of the workforce are employed by the company because you all have widget making skills which the business finds most suitable to help it succeed to reach its market share objectives and become prosperous. Your buddy-making skills aren’t really needed. Your widget making abilities as well as your determination to succeed while being good company, helpful and empathetic as well as desirable and friendly toward your workmates come as a neatly packaged bundle which the company prizes and needs. But remember this – you were hired only because you can make widgets better than the guy they did not hire. And do not for a second think that your boss wants to be your best buddy. No way! She has targets to achieve and you are there to help her succeed and make her look good in her boss’s eyes.

OFFICE FRIENDLY ONLY: I do not think you were hired for how many friends you will make along the way. There are no KPIs to be achieved here. But it is important to be ‘office friendly’ and to not alienate yourself or create a void between you, your department and those neighbours who can help you achieve your objectives. You need to find and strike a good balance between in-office and out-of-office relationships. Of course many a married couples met at the company they worked at. This is the exception not the rule.

WATERCOOLER MEET-UPS ONLY: Leaning against the watercooler ‘chatting’ to Bill or Sue from the Billing department is part of the stakeholder relationship building project. I consider this a very worthwhile bridge-building exercise. By meeting up in the hallways and at the watercoolers with Bill the account manager and Susan from billing, you are connecting with the very people who will be doing the corrective work you want carried out to unlock payments from your customers.

In order to leverage your stakeholder relationship building programme, you can consider the following:

You need to increase your exposure to all stakeholders (billing, customer service, account and sales management, service delivery/provide/engineering, finance and legal) who can help you to get bills paid by your customers. Go meet the senior managers at your stakeholder departments and keep talking to them at very regular intervals thereafter.

You can also search out individuals within your stakeholder groups and strike up a working partnership with them. This way you will always have a person to call on for help when appropriate. Do not abuse or take advantage of this relationship.

You need to highlight and illustrate your appreciation for the support you get from stakeholders. Tell your peers and seniors how and why those long overdue bills are getting paid because dispute resolutions are getting resolved faster. And publicly thank your stakeholder groups for their co-operation.

You may want to connect and engage with other influencers inside the business.

As always – spotlight your successful results to your bosses and tell tham that your problem-solving abilities are appreciated and supported strongly by your contacts within the stakeholder groups.

If anyone is going to enhance your skill at resolving problems it is you. You need to meet the challenge head on and highlight your skills and ability to work well with people from the different stakeholder departments to get problems resolved and bills paid. It is you who needs to do your own PR (public relations) work at the company you work at. You must show the business that you know how to be proactive, where the influencing people are in the organisation and who to connect with to get the results you need.

Do all this successfully month after month and you will be well on your way to becoming a Collections RockStar.

Rock on!

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